In many organizations, everything that can be measured is measured: number of pallets moved, average processing time, productivity down to the minute. This obsession with detail often gives the impression of tight control over activity, but it hides a deeper weakness: a lack of overall vision. When organizations limit themselves to purely operational KPIs, they risk falling into micro-management or, worse, into local optimizations that harm overall performance.
That’s why it is crucial to establish a cascade of indicators that connects the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. In other words, the right KPIs should help steer the organization as a whole, not just monitor its every move.
Thinking higher: KPIs as a lever for coherence
The first benefit of aiming for strategic and tactical KPIs is alignment. A good strategic indicator—such as profitability, customer satisfaction, or market share—helps maintain focus on the company’s top priorities. But that’s not enough. Those objectives also need to be translated across departments into concrete levers. This is where tactical KPIs come into play.
Take the example of service level. It doesn’t just show whether the customer gets what they expect; it also reflects the effectiveness of several upstream processes: inventory management, processing speed, logistical coordination. By measuring this kind of indicator, we ensure that day-to-day actions contribute to broader objectives rather than just the execution of individual tasks.
Moreover, these “intermediate” KPIs encourage accountability within teams. Instead of imposing a method or scrutinizing activity volumes, we define a target to achieve and leave freedom in how to get there. It’s a way of managing through results rather than through control.
Tactical KPIs: accelerators of continuous improvement (or when the tree hides the forest)
It’s often said that, when faced with daily urgencies and incidents, the tree hides the forest: we focus on what screams the loudest, without noticing underlying drifts. Tactical KPIs then serve as intermediate observers: close enough to the field to remain actionable, yet able to capture structural trends invisible to overly detailed operational indicators.
In a DMAIC (Define–Measure–Analyze–Improve–Control) approach, these KPIs play a key role starting in the Measure phase, by reliably quantifying recurring gaps (service level, inventory turnover, etc.). The results feed into the Analyze phase, which searches for root causes, before testing targeted actions in Improve. Finally, the same indicator serves as a safeguard in Control to verify the sustainability of gains. Rather than simply fixing the falling tree, we plan the management of the whole forest: tactical KPIs become true facilitators of mid-scale improvement.
The strength of tactical KPIs lies in their usefulness for investigation, narrowing down intervention zones through effective data breakdowns. This level of indicator acts like an analytical compass: it narrows the scope to plausible causes, avoiding wasted time exploring everywhere at once. It also helps identify correlations and recurring patterns that reveal systemic problems often invisible to the naked eye.
In this sense, tactical KPIs become triggers for targeted analysis. Rather than questioning everything, they help formulate solid hypotheses to be tested in a structured approach such as DMAIC. This intelligent targeting makes improvement efforts faster, more effective, and better supported by data. It is then up to the analyst to formulate and test a more precise hypothesis about the causes of the issue under investigation, in order to trigger a new investigation loop.
This level of investigation is only achievable once tactical indicators are measured, because otherwise it becomes difficult to prioritize intervention zones without large-scale data.
The art of designing relevant KPIs
Every well-run organization steers its decisions by its strategic vision. It is possible to develop measurable objectives aligned with this vision, and these objectives will be tracked through strategic KPIs. From these strategic KPIs flow tactical KPIs, tied to actions that will help the organization reach its strategic goals.
To increase data relevance, I would add that it is always preferable to store this information inside a data cube, where analysts can easily pivot across multiple dimensions and run characteristic-based analyses. Compared to a dashboard or a simple pre-formatted report, analysis cubes enable proactive problem-solving. And that’s without even mentioning operational reports, which are only used to drill down into each transaction in the system.
Conclusion
A good KPI system is not limited to measuring what is easiest to quantify. It must reflect what is essential to guide, correct, and evolve the organization. By intelligently linking the strategic, tactical, and operational levels, indicators become more than numbers: they become levers of coherence, triggers for continuous improvement, and high-value decision-making tools.
Tactical KPIs, in particular, prevent the tree from hiding the forest. They help with prioritization, direct efforts where they matter most, and transform intuitions into structured analyses. Well designed, well placed, and used within analytical tools like data cubes, they form the foundation of a culture of sustainable, proactive optimization aligned with organizational strategy.
Instead of getting bogged down in details or steering blindly, it then becomes possible to navigate with precision, clarity… and impact.
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